His first step was to remove some of the yellowing of the plastic using Retr0brite. He admits it wasn’t bad to start with but now it’s sparkling like new. Next, he started planning how everything would fit in the case. Luckily the MP3 player operates with one AAA battery which leaves plenty of room.

Just above the A and B buttons you can make out an opening that he cut in the case for the MP3 player’s LCD screen. The bezel from the original case works well for cleaning the rough cut opening. The buttons on the controller have been patched into the controls on the MP3 board, and the opening for the controller’s cable now holds the headphone jack. There’s also a USB port mounted next to it for easy file transfers.

The one thing we would like to see is a rechargeable battery so you don’t need to open the case to top off the power. But all in all this is a fantastic build!

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20 thoughts on “NES controller cannibalized for MP3 player enclosure”

Very cool. I still a few brand new NES controllers in their box laying around for whatever reason.

I had aspirations of gutting one, putting a 1st gen iPod nano guts in, putting the screen right in the middle above the select/start buttons and loading a NES emulator. I hadn’t figured out the button mapping in my head, but I thought it’d be a sweet project that never got off the ground… it’d be a sweet travel companion…

Come on, quit being a douche. The NES was the best selling console of it’s age, selling over 60 million units according to Wikipedia. So probably well over 120 million controllers were made. These things are so cheap and common, and the percentage of people that hack them is so miniscule, that it’s not even worth mentioning.

Assuming that this is runnable on say AA batteries you could design in a usb based Ni-mh charge circuit and a software switch that turns it on or off. I’d suggest making that something that is cleared when the battery. Sure you have to re-set it to charging enabled whenever you remove the battery, but at least that way if you choose to use alkalines along the way it won’t be trying to charge them unless one is stupid.

I am assuming here that there isn’t a way to detect batteries that aren’t rechargeable, but if their were that would be better idea.

Our society relies an awful lot on their being a place to plug-in their rechargeable battery powered devices and easily obtained replacement batteries or devices. Not that anyone has much that would run on 2-3 AA batteries anymore, but for things that can it’d be nice if the battery compartment was designed with that possible use in mind.